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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Consider Satellite Radio

Big news today was about a proposed merger between the two main Satellite Radio providers who claim they need it to survive, and I just started thinking about their situation and wondered, why don't they have channels with advertising?

Simple idea, and it goes to a business model that works--cable television.

There are pay channels and there are channels that offer advertising.

Simple.

But these people think they are smart and believe that the benefit they offer customers is NO advertising, so they'd rather die than consider that the benefit they offer customers is the ability to get what they want anywhere.

If they offer channels that have ads they can have people listening who have basic subscriptions, who are using them because they can get a digital signal anywhere in the country (thinking about the US).

So yeah, why can't they just listen to the radio then?

Because hey, I've traveled across this country several times and you have to keep switching stations. Duh.

Millions of dollars at stake. The survival of companies and lots of people's jobs on the line and thinking in the box--following a business model that is currently working for the cable industry--doesn't occur to people you'd think would want to win.

But problem solving can be about obvious, when obvious is invisible to people who have not been trained how to think.

And in the real world, entire countries can die for stupid reasons because people were too "smart" to figure out simple solutions, so a couple of dinky companies?

Barely worth talking about, and believe me, at the rate they are going, they both will die---with the answer to their problems staring them in the face.


James Harris

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